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Located on board most starships and space stations, the turbolift, or turbo-elevator, provided both vertical and horizontal transportation for personnel through turboshafts between key sections of a ship. In the 2270s, the turbolift's tactile interface was succeeded by voice command operation.

The turbolift personnel transport system was a network of inductively powered transport tubes allowing the volume of the ship to be traversed in a high-speed manner.

Turbolift access denied

Many Starfleet turbolifts were comprised of a lightweight duranium-composite framework supporting a cylindrical personnel cab constructed from microfoamed duranium sheeting. Mounted longitudinally along the exterior of the cab were three linear induction motors that provided the motive force. Electromagnetic conduits located along the length of each turboshaft provided power to these motors, allowing accelerations up to ten meters per second squared. (citation needed • edit) To counter such high acceleration speeds, an inertial dampener was usually installed at the base of the cab to provide crew comfort, eliminating some (although not all) of the acceleration effects. In some Starfleet vessels, a plan of the ship was displayed along the back of the turbolift, allowing for directional assistance in the absence of computer access. Turbolifts could also be locked down in the event of a security incident, blocking access to critical areas of the ship, such as the main bridge. (TNG: "11001001")

NX-class starships needed only a button to be pressed to specify which deck to travel to. (ENT: "Cold Front") Incorporated in the design of Constitution-class turbolifts were small handles on the interior, allowing for transport without the use of voice commands. At some point, it became necessary to use both the handle and to submit a voice command on board Constitution-class ships. (DS9: "Trials and Tribble-ations") Later refits phased out any analog interfaces and featured auditory receivers allowing passengers to use voice commands to direct the turbolift. Upon receipt of the voice command, the command queried the network, allowing for computation of the most optimal route to the destination. Such routes factored in the presence of other turbolifts already in operation. The auditory receivers also automatically scanned for voiceprint authentication, allowing for select personnel access to restricted areas. Turbolifts from the 23rd century also featured communication panels to allow communication with other sections of the ship without the need for a communicator. (TOS: "Elaan of Troyius")

While most starship turbolifts were enclosed, some turbolifts remained open when at rest, in the style of an elevator built in the early-to-mid-20th century. The Cardassians built such a turbolift on Terok Nor when it was in operation, and it was still in use by Starfleet on the renamed Deep Space 9. Once this turbolift was activated, it became enclosed as a precautionary measure. These turbolifts' positioning mechanisms were powered by multi-phase alternating current. In ships and stations that contained turbolift doors that remained closed while not in use, the doors were often unresponsive in low or no power situations.

With Voyager at low power, Janeway is forced to open the turbolift doors by hand

In a Galaxy-class starship, turbolifts were regulated by the turbolift control and an average of ten turbolift cars were in service at any one time. Some peak usage times, such as change-of-shift, could call for a doubling of the turbolift cars with only a 22% decrease in efficiency. The reason this was possible was that the turboshaft network was designed with the specific purpose of allowing multi-access loops and thus permitting a flexible route for each turbolift car. (citation needed • edit)

When battle stations are ordered, all turbolift cars may be subjected to deactivation pending the authorization of the commanding officer. In such cases, personnel are still free to move about the ship via a network of vertical ladders and Jefferies tubes.

This may be contradictory to what was seen in "11001001". In that episode, an umbilical was attached to the midsection of the Enterprise with personnel traversing it, but the bow of the ship could not be seen, and thus the aforementioned turboelevator network connection to the starbase was not revealed.

In an hallucination experienced by EnsignHoshi Sato in 2152, she imagined walking into a turbolift that didn't respond to her repeatedly pressing a button on the control pad. It was apparently not until another crewman entered the lift and operated the same control panel that the turbolift finally complied. (ENT: "Vanishing Point")

The final draft script of ENT: "The Catwalk" confirmed the likelihood that Enterprise's turbolifts were deliberately shut down as a precuation taken by the crew in preparation for the ship traversing a neutronic storm.

In the first draft script of aborted filmStar Trek: The Beginning, a turbolift incident followed a devastating attack on Starfleet Headquarters. When Skon punched the panel on a turbolift door, the door didn't respond, so he had to pry the door open. When he looked through the open doorway, he saw only the gaping turbolift shaft. Moments later, the turbolift car hurtled down the shaft in a freefall and crashed at the bottom, prompting Skon to conclude that he and the personnel on the same floor of Starfleet Headquarters as him would be using the stairs instead.

In 2263 of the alternate reality, the USS Enterprise was heavily damaged and ultimately destroyed in an attack by innumerable tiny ships commanded by the "alien" warlord Krall. During the attack, Krall ordered the swarm to "cut [Enterprise's] throat", an action which severed several turbolift shafts. This resulted in a turbolift Leonard McCoy and Spock were travelling in being ejected into space. McCoy and Spock were able to escape by hijacking one of the ships when its occupants attempted to capture them. (Star Trek Beyond)

This may be a joke taken from a well-known Star Trek: The Original Series blooper which shows the turbolift opening only partially.

Lwaxana Troi and Odo inside a turbolift in 2369

In 2365, when the USS Enterprise-D scanned the logs from the USS Yamato, they contracted a computer virus, which severely affected all critical systems aboard the ship. One of these systems was the turbolifts, as a consequent malfunction resulted in highly increased acceleration rates and tremendous direction shifts, injuring LieutenantGeordi La Forge inside, and practically throwing him onto the bridge. (TNG: "Contagion")

In 2368, a metal parasite infested the Enterprise-D when it destroyed an asteroid about to collide with a planet. When this parasite began to ingest the nitrium from all critical systems, the turbolifts became affected, because the circuitry was being broken down as Captain Picard and Lieutenant CommanderData were still inside, although they managed to escape uninjured. (TNG: "Cost of Living")

Also in 2368, a collection of quantum filaments collided with the Enterprise-D, disabling power to many of the main systems, including life support, main engines, and computer control. At this time, Picard and some children were in a turbolift, and Picard decided to climb the emergency shaft in case the unstable turbolift fell in the shaft. Using a makeshift rope made from optical cable, Picard and the children escaped the doomed turbolift and climbed to the upper decks. (TNG: "Disaster")

During the development of "Crossfire", the idea of a turbolift falling was thought up by the DS9 writers. The falling turbolift replaced a sequence involving an explosion and a fireball. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, pp. 305 & 304)

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In the script of TOS: "Where No Man Has Gone Before", this type of elevator was referred to as "a high-speed cab with many capabilities (to permit development in future episodes)." The script went on to describe the effect of the turbolift in motion; "We will see flickering lights of the rapidly accelerating ship's elevator passing deck after deck."

Garfield Reeves-Stevens explains how, for "Where No Man Has Gone Before", the effect of a turbolift moving between decks in a single shot was achieved; "It's just a really clever, simple trick, where they just put up a wall, I guess a 'wild' wall, in front of the bridge, and actually shot the turbolift on the bridge. And as soon as the turbolift doors close, then they started the light beams going up the side, just rolled away the wild wall and then when the turbolift doors open, they're there." (Starfleet Access for "Where No Man Has Gone Before", TOS Season 1 Blu-ray special features)

As scripted for the next episode, "The Corbomite Maneuver", a turbolift containing Kirk was to change direction from vertical to horizontal travel, while its destination was redirected from the bridge to the captain's quarters. In the final version of the episode, though, the lift is only shown making an ascent, prior to when the course change would have been. Another turbolift ride featuring Kirk was scripted to be shown later in the episode, but is not in the final cut of the installment.

The fact that Gene Roddenberry liked the concept of having discussions in the turbolifts of the Galaxy-class Enterprise influenced the designers of the ship, who at first considered having an on-bridge transporter for TNG, to ultimately discard that idea. (Starlog issue #125, p. 46)

Similarly, although a monorail was initially considered for transportation within Deep Space 9, the turbolifts were again opted for. "We had the concept of the turbolifts kinda tying together the whole station," said Concept Artist Ricardo Delgado. (Deep Space Nine: A Bold Beginning, DS9 Season 1 DVD special features) Owing to television's need for speedy plot advancement, a way of maneuvering characters to and from the operations center (or "Ops") quickly was required, which was why a turbolift was incorporated into the set designed for Ops. (Star Trek - Where No One Has Gone Before, paperback ed., p. 168)

Showing turbolifts enter and leave a room was something Production Designer Herman Zimmerman "always wanted to do." He was able to achieve this goal on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, with the turbolift in Deep Space 9's operations center. "We only had a certain amount of space under the stage that we could work with so one of the criteria for raising a platform was to gain an extra few feet to operate these elevator mechanisms," he commented. "We do see the actors come up out of the stage floor and that proves to be very effective. On other sets that isn't possible so we just see the elevator doors open as we do in The Next Generation." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 23, No. 6, p. 29)

For DS9: "Trials and Tribble-ations", a 23rd-century turbolift had to be recreated and built as a set by the DS9 art department. The lighting of the turbolift matched that of the turbolifts from TOS, rather than those in TNG. "We actually put a roller belt with holes in it, and put a stationary light behind it, and literally hand cracked the roller," stated Herman Zimmerman. "Of course now we do it with a computer chip and a lot of light bulbs that go on and off sequentially that change the floors. But I think the effects department got a kick out of doing it the old way." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 29, Nos. 6/7, pp. 76 & 78)

In the film Star Trek, a turbolift which is visible aboard the USS Kelvin was originally to have included a wall-mounted diagram of the ship's exterior, though that design element was excised during the making of the film. (Star Trek - The Art of the Film, p. 27) The exterior of the turbolift, seen briefly as it descends through a turboshaft into engineering, was (like the turboshafts themselves) visualized with CGI. (Star Trek Three disc Blu-ray documentary featurette "Starships")